


Kindling

by rosegardeninwinter



Series: The Light and the Red [2]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 12:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15796092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosegardeninwinter/pseuds/rosegardeninwinter
Summary: "He wonders how long they can keep it up, before surviving loses its appeal."Sequel to "Matchstick." I recommend you read that one first or this might not make much sense!





	Kindling

His parents would be ashamed of him.

He would say “their parents” only he’s not sure. Does the figure that rustles past him on the couch every night consider herself his sibling anymore? Should she? Should he?

The fights he used to watch from the stairwell tell him no.

The blankets he finds draped over him in the morning tell him yes.

The bottle in his hand tells him he’s in no position to judge. They’re no different, he and his sister.

He smashes the bottle into the trash can. He scrambles on hands and knees, sweeping empty bottles to his chest from under the couch and the curtains, fishing them out of his bathtub.

_I’m sorry, Mama. I’m sorry, Papa. I’m so, so sorry._

His sister finds him slumped over at the sink, elbow deep in water which has turned pink. He didn’t notice his cut fingers, but they hurt now that he focuses on them.

The nails on his sister’s right hand are painted gold and the smell of polish remover clings to her left. He makes it his priority to stare at nothing else while she bandages his hands.

“Ash?”

He doesn’t want to, but he meets her eyes. Where has she been tonight? With whom? Why can’t he answer those questions?

How they end up hunched over the kitchen counter, crying like they’ll never stop, he won’t remember. But since Mama and Papa’s deaths, it’s the most human thing he’s done and it gives him hope.

“We can’t be like this,” he says, wiping his nose. “I don’t want to be like this.”

“We won’t,” she promises. “We won’t.”

They won’t because they can’t. Not anymore, not when they’ve teetered on the edge of insanity, and only somehow managed to scramble to higher ground.

“Lil, where’d you go tonight?” he asks the ceiling of Mama and Papa’s bedroom hours later.

Willow, on the right side of the bed, remains silent.

It’s not the same, not the same at all, but it feels better, being here. Like somehow, behind the closed door, Mama and Papa are still up, and they will come to bed soon, find their children here. They’ll be gone by morning.

But they were here.

Once.

The room still smells of them.

They continue their act, but it’s just that now. An act. His sister returns home earlier than she used to and there is only resignation in the way she scours her face. She never smiles.

He wonders how long they can keep it up, before surviving loses its appeal.

How did Mama and Papa ever do it? How could the thought _this will keep Willow from starving_ or _this will keep Ash out of the Games_ be enough to make … whatever it was … worth it?

His sister will have to be enough for him. His sister is enough for him. He would think that Livia or Effie or someone might come check on them (they are just kids after all), but no one ever ventures past the front gate. Not even Snow, keeping up pretenses. Willow slips up and calls him Grandpa sometimes. He knows she doesn’t mean to, but it’s habit. It takes a lot after sixteen years (twelve in his case) to come to grips with that lie.

It’s like they don’t exist anymore. Maybe that’s the idea. It’s probably not meant to be a mercy, but it is.

The late nights become sporadic. The tabloids become disinterested. Lil declares a good weekend. On Saturday they wake late and whip up a big breakfast. Pancakes with powdered sugar and fresh fruit. They get into a flour fight making the pancakes, and though there’s a lump in his throat (and probably in hers too) at the memory of moments when there were four people in the kitchen, it’s not too painful a one.

“I think they’d want us to be happy,” he says as they finish up breakfast, still dusted with flour.

“I miss them,” Willow says. “You’re right — but I still miss them.”

“Draw them,” he says and he swears he sees fireworks light up her eyes.

“Draw them,” she repeats and she’s up from the table and scrambling around for paper and watercolors.

He never did learn how to paint, no matter how diligently Papa tried to teach him. Willow is another story. She takes her sketchpad and her watercolors from the closet and dives in with an abandon that, for once, seems okay.

The dishes sit dirty on the kitchen table well into the afternoon.

His sister’s work is perfect. As she traces Papa’s cheek with her pencil she might as well be touching skin.

“Ash,” she says. “Sing.”

“What?”

“I’m drawing,” she says with a smile. “You sing. Sing the song about the boats. It used to be your favorite.”

It did. He would beg Mama to sing it every night. He’s not sure he can get through it without breaking down, but he thinks Mama would like it.

_Dark brown is the river, golden is the sand. It flows along forever, with trees on either hand._

He sings. Lil sketches: Papa building them a blanket fort under the kitchen table and Mama reading by the fire.

_Green leaves a-floating, castles of the foam. Boats of mine a-boating. Where will all come home?_

Grandma Everdeen making medicine and Uncle Haymitch shooing geese in his front yard.

_On goes the river, and out past the mill. Away down the valley. Away down the hill. Away down the river — a hundred miles or more. Other little children shall bring my boats to shore._

Willow lays her last drawing down. Ash’s voice is exhausted. He has sung every song that he knows.

“Lil that’s —”

“Dangerous,” she says. “I know. I don’t care.”

She has drawn Mama and Papa, young and hollow-cheeked, berries in their hands and fire in their eyes.

“What happened to that? The rebellion Uncle Gale used to talk about?”

She just shakes her head. “It died, I guess.”

“Did it?”

Willow shrugs, but her picture of his parents’ almost suicide has him thinking.

Not every song he knows.

“Are you, are you, coming to the tree? Where they strung up a man they say murdered three?”

“She used to sing that to Papa,” Willow says, “when it was late.”

“It was always late,” he says. “I don’t think she was supposed to sing it.”

He sings all four verses. He wonders if the strange anger that awakens in his veins is what he sees in his sister’s eyes.

They throw back the curtains in Mama and Papa’s enormous room, straighten the bed and the dressers (still full of their clothes; Willow presses her nose to every shirt) and then finally, finally and slowly (because they’re trying but it’s so hard) they return to their own bedrooms for the first time in a month.

His bed is cold but clean. He whispers out mountain airs and valley lullabies until he drifts off.

He wakes to red lights and to Willow screaming and to masked figures lifting him from his bed.

He should have known they’d be listening.

 **Tragedy Strikes Ill Fated House Once More**  


He can see the headlines now and he has to give them credit — it’ll be a good spin. Glamour, beauty, calamity. He’d read it.

He always thought a bullet in the brain would hurt more.

Guess not.

* * *

The first thing of which he becomes aware is the droning: mechanical and low, like a dishwasher.

The second: the sound of his own breathing. He pries his eyes open. He really has to pry; his lids feel like lead. Pale greenish lights glimmer above him on the ceiling. There is something beneath his back. A cot.

The third thing of which he is aware: he is not, in fact, dead.

The fourth: there is a man sitting beside him, quite devoid of the extravagant dress and makeup to which Ash is so accustomed.

“Good morning,” says the stranger. “Don’t worry. You’re safe.”

His mouth feels as numb as the day they discovered he was allergic to ginger. “My sister,” he manages to croak.

“Is perfectly well,” assures the man. “She woke before you did. She’s having something to eat at the moment and as soon as you get your bearings, you should join her.”

“Who are you?” he asks painfully as he sits up.

“Plutarch Heavensbee, Head Gamemaker.”

Ash stiffens.

“Former, I should say. Currently, I am an orchestrator of the rebellion against Snow,” finishes Plutarch Heavensbee with a chuckle and a satisfied adjustment of his collar. “My apologies for the … unceremonious … circumstances under which you and your sister came to us. It can take a day or so to shake the aftereffects of that sleep dart I’m afraid, but we didn’t have much time before Snow noticed I’d ah … found work elsewhere.”

“What is this?”

“A hovercraft,” Plutarch says, “en route to District Thirteen.”

Ash doesn’t even know where to start, but he pinpoints one vital question. “What am I doing here?”

“Ah,” says Plutarch with a smile, “it will be easier to explain that when we arrive. Until then, suffice it to say that you and your sister are needed for something we call the Mockingjay Plan.”

* * *

“Do you know what this is?”

Mama’s pin. It’s supposed to be in the Victors’ Museum. But here it is, clinking onto Alma Coin’s gray table. He doesn’t answer.

“It’s our mother’s Mockingjay pin,” Willow says.

“Exactly,” says Alma Coin. “When your mother was young, the Mockingjay was a sign of hope, of rebellion against the Capitol.”

They’ve been in 13 for half an hour and in some twisted way, Ash misses home. Not home, not home. The Capitol. Whatever it is, he misses the colors. 13 is gray, gray, gray. The president herself is gray. Gray eyes, gray hair, regimented frame in gray clothes.

He wants to help the rebellion, he really does, but already he dislikes Coin. She’s like a fish: emotionless eyes, pointed face, something greedy in her tight-lipped mouth.

“You are a vital part in our getting the Mockingjay Plan underway.”

“You want us to be your figureheads?”

“No. This is about terms and conditions, Miss Mellark.”

“Terms and conditions? We’re talking some sort of contract?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Coin says. Her mouth thins so that her lips are barely visible. “In order to get the plan underway, we must satisfy certain conditions. That is why you are here.”

“Meaning?” Ash asks. He fights not to smile at the annoyance flaring in Coin’s eyes.

“The crux of the matter is this. Are you both willing to pledge loyalty to and support—fully—the rebellion and the Mockingjay Plan?”

“We don’t really know what—” Willow starts, but a noise in the hall stops her. One of the guards outside the president’s door is talking urgently.

“You are not allowed into the president’s office at the moment, sir. I’m sorry. Please feel welcome to wait here.”

“Feel welcome to—!” comes a man’s voice. “Do you want to play this game with me, son? Because I can promise you—!”

Scuffling.

“Ma’am, please. You are not authorized to enter at this time.”

“Damn authorization! Were they never going to tell us?”

“Ash …” Willow whispers, clutching at his arm like she’s about to panic. “Ash …”

“It’s been a month!” the woman cuts in. “It’s been a month since I’ve seen my babies! If you don’t let us through right now—!”

“Ma’am! Sir, please!”

The door flies open and slams against the wall.

It’s strangely reminiscent of the night Snow took them to the hospital. Except this time, it’s Willow who screams and it’s him that tries to stand, only to slide, nerves numb, to the floor.

It’s strangely reminiscent of the night … yeah, the floor is looking like a good place to be right now.

It’s strangely reminiscent of the night his parents didn’t die.

**Author's Note:**

> the song that Ash sings is the poem "Where Go the Boats" by Robert Lewis Stevenson, one of my childhood favorites; Ted Jacob's sung version is particularly what I have in mind 
> 
> bit of a bombshell at the end there but rest assured there will be more to the story! this is only part two of five so don't touch that remote!


End file.
